Sunday, July 30, 2006

Interview - DOLENTIA

Dolentia is a Portuguese Underground Black Metal band constituted by Nihil in the guitars and Sangre in the drums.Their music is based on folklore, tradition and medieval history. Their formation came from 2004 and finally released their first Rehearsal tape by Bubonic productions, so we came to talk with Nihil to know a little more about the band.

Tell us a little about Dolentia.

Dolentia (latin name for disease) was born in November 2004, when me and Sangre decided to create a project to express our vision of black metal. We have very specific similar musical tastes, so it was a very natural process. During the year of 2005 we had some rehearsing problems, so only in 2006 we had conditions to record our first work entitled "Cadunt Altis de Montibus Umbrae".

How can you describe your sound and your influences?

Harsh sound guitars through fast and mid paced drums mixed with folk acoustics and raw vocals. Our musical influences go from some names of the French black metal scene to old Bathory, Venom, Mercyful Fate as well as some dark folk acts and medieval influenced music.

Tell us about the subjects of your lyrics. Your title songs are written in Latin, you write them in Latin?

Dolentia's concept is about medieval Portuguese history (the period between X and XIV century) focusing political history, war, plague and death. Our titles are in latin but our lyrics are in Portuguese. Latin has a strong connection to the country (it's was the official language used in documents during the first dynasty) so it was a natural choice for our writing along with our mother language.So we can say that Dolentia is a patriotic band, right?

Our history is the base of our culture and that's something we deeply admire even if we don't agree with all decisions and ways taken during the centuries. There's a strong nationalist feeling in our music, but our music is not a vehicle for any fascist, communist or any other ideological propaganda.

Talking about patriotism is talking about our roots, our tradition and our history…

Absolutely. What we are now is the product of a long historic path of self discovering that slowly built our culture, All the problems that Portuguese people faced together as a nation marked the popular conscience, our traditions and artistic manifestations: since the independence wars against our Spanish neighbours, against the Moors, the plagues and hunger… everything had an enormous impact towards our growth as a nation, as homogeneous group of individuals with its own goals and with a special importance in universal history.

You have released your first Rehearsal tape by Bubonic Productions. Can you do a description of this rehearsal, how people is accepting this release and how do you came with the creation of Bubonic Productions

Our first demo entitled "Cadunt Altis de Montibus Umbrae" is a 22 minute medieval influenced raw black metal piece divided in 3 tracks that had a small tape edition of 100 hand numbered copies through my label. Until now people seem to be reacting well to our material (even with the bad quality of the recordings), but to be honest that is not an important thing to me neither to Sangre. Bubonic Productions was created in 2006 as a label/distro turned to extreme musical manifestations with a ritualistic, folk oriented feeling. There are some future releases planed to a near future, let's see...Do you expect to do some live shows with Dolentia or the band is a studio band ?

In the right time we will perform live.

What do you think about the Portuguese metal Scene ?

Like all the scenes, there are good bands and less good bands. There are a few that I appreciate a lot.

What do expect in the future to Dolentia? What are your projects to the future?

We don't want fame, money or recognition with our music, so we will continue on doing what we like and believe without any exterior interference, immune to trends and apart of the stupidity and wars that often are present in the underground. To the near future are planed two releases through Bubonic: a special conceptual tape about Portugal origins and our second (conventional) demo.